Texas Locavore

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled into the kitchen one morning last week. I’d returned home at 3am after a three-day drive from my parents’ house in Idaho, then slept only a few hours before emerging in search of breakfast. Innocently enough, an avocado sat on the counter among grapefruits and half a head of garlic. Still un-caffeinated, I picked it up, probing with my palm to determine when we’d have guacamole. Then I saw it: the sticker that said “New Zealand.”

“An avocado from New Zealand?!!” I asked my husband. (His side of the story might say I accused.) I must have repeated this phrase dozens of times that morning, so befuddling I found it that this humble fruit had traveled 7,320 miles to be macerated in our molcajete. While the Rio Grande Valley yields some avocados, they’re not a big crop for Texas since the tree that bears them really detests cold weather. But our neighbor Mexico has a thriving avocado industry, as do Chile and California — hardly next-door, unless we happen to be comparing them to New Zealand. When I called our local H.E.B., where Hubby had shopped, Mike in the produce section explained that our store gets everything from the San Antonio headquarters, which in turn gets its goods from different sources, depending on availability. A Kiwi avocado is surprising, he agreed, but obviously not unheard of in this global age. And the guacamole didn’t disappoint.